Loon Lake Read online

  And this party of visitors were really romantic gangsters

  thieves, extortionists and murderers of the lower class

  and their women who might or might not be whores.

  The old man welcomed them warmly

  enjoying their responses to his camp

  admiring the women in their tight dresses and red lips

  relishing the having of them there so out of place

  at Loon Lake.

  The first morning of their visit

  he led everyone down the hill

  to give them rides in his biggest speedboat

  a long mahogany Chris-Craft with a powerful inboard

  that resonantly shook the water as she idled.

  He handed them each a woolen poncho with a hood

  and told them the ride was fast and cold

  but still they were not prepared when under way

  he opened up the throttle

  and the boat reared in the water like Buck Jones’ horse.

  The women shrieked and gripped the gangsters’ arms

  and spray stinging like ice coated their faces

  while the small flag at the stern snapped like a machine gun.

  And one of the men lipping an unlit cigarette

  felt it whipped away by the wind.

  He turned and saw it sail over the wake

  where a loon appeared from nowhere

  beaked it before it hit the water

  and rose back into the sky above the mountain.

  Annotate boat reared in the water like Buck Jones’ horse as follows: Buck Jones a cowboy movie star silents 1920s and talkies early 1930s. Others of this specie: Tom Mix, Tim McCoy, Big Boy Williams. Buck Jones’ horse palomino stallion named Silver. Others of this specie: Pal Feller Tony.

  The old man rode them around Loon Lake, its islands

  through channels where beaver had built their lodges

  and everything they saw the trees the mountains

  the water and even the land they couldn’t see under the water

  was what he owned. And then he brought them in throttling down

  and the boat was awash in a rush of foam

  like the outspread wings of a waterbird coming to rest.

  Two other mahogany boats of different lengths

  were berthed in the boathouse

  and racks of canoes and guide boats upside down

  and on walls paddles hanging from brackets

  and fishing rods and snowshoes for some strange reason

  and not a gangster there did not reflect

  how this dark boathouse with its canals

  and hollow-sounding deck floors

  was bigger than the home his family lived in

  when he was a kid, as big as the orphan’s home in fact.

  But one gangster wanted to know about the lake

  and its connecting lakes, the distance one could travel on them

  as if he was planning a fast getaway.

  Just disappearing around the corner out of sight

  was the boathouse attendant.

  And everyone walked up the hill for drinks and lunch.

  Drinks were at twelve-thirty and lunch at one-thirty

  after which, returning to their rooms,

  the guests found riding outfits laid across their beds

  and boots in their right sizes all new.

  At three they met each other at the stables

  laughing at each other and being laughed at

  and the stableman fitted them out with horses

  and the sensation was particularly giddy when the horses

  began to move without warning ignoring them up there in the saddle

  threatening to launch with each bounce like a paddle ball.

  And so each day the best gangster among them realized

  there would be something to do they could not do well.

  The unchecked walking horses made for the woods

  no one was in the lead, the old man was not there.

  They were alone on these horses who took this wide trail

  they seemed to know.

  They were busy maintaining themselves on the tops of these horses

  stepping with their plodding footfall through the soft earth

  of the wide trail.

  By and by proceeding gently downhill they came

  to another shore of the lake, of Loon Lake,

  and the trees were cut down here and the cold sun shone.

  They found themselves before an airplane hangar

  with a concrete ramp sloping into the water.

  As the horses stood there the hangar doors slid open

  there was a man pushing back each of the steel doors

  although they saw only his arm and hand and shoetops.

  And then from a gray cloud over the mountain

  beyond the far end of the lake an airplane appeared

  and made its descent in front of the mountain

  growing larger as it came toward them

  a green-and-white seaplane with a cowled engine and overhead wing.

  It landed in the water with barely a splash

  taxiing smartly with a feathery sound.

  The horses nickered and stirred, everyone held on

  and the lead gangster said whoa boy, whoa boy

  and the goddamn plane came right out of the water

  up the ramp, water falling from its pontoons

  the wheels in the pontoons leaving a wet track on the concrete

  and nosed up to the open hangar

  blowing up a cloud of dirt and noise.

  The engine was cut and the cabin door opened

  and putting her hands on the wing struts a woman jumped down

  a slim woman in trousers and a leather jacket and a silk scarf

  and a leather helmet which she removed showing light-brown hair cut close

  and she looked at them and nodded without smiling

  and that was the old man’s wife.

  Annotate old man’s wife as follows: Lucinda Bailey Bennett born 1896 Philadelphia PA. Father US Undersecretary of State Bangwin Channing under McKinley. Private tutoring in France and Switzerland. Miss Morris’ School for Young Women. Brearly. Long Island School of Aviation practicing stalls tailspins stalled glide half-roll snap roll slow roll rolling eight wingovers Immelmann loops. Winner First Woman’s Air Regatta Long Island New York to Palm Beach Florida 1921. Winner Single-Engine National Women’s Sprints 1922–1929. First woman to fly alone Long Island-Bermuda. Woman’s world record cross-country flight Long Island to San Diego 1932, twenty-seven hours sixteen minutes. First woman to fly alone Long Island to Newfoundland. Winner Chicago Air Meet 1931, 1932, 1933. Glenn Curtiss National Aviatrix Silver Cup 1934. Lindbergh Trophy 1935. Member President’s Commission on the Future of Aviation 1936. Honorary Member US Naval Air Patrol 1936. Lost on round-the-world flight over the Pacific 1937.

  She strode off down the trail toward the big house

  and they were not to see her again that day

  neither at drinks which were at six-thirty

  nor dinner at seven-thirty.

  But her husband was a gracious host

  attentive to the women particularly.

  He revealed that she was a famous aviatrix

  and some of them recognized her name from the newspapers.

  He spoke proudly of her accomplishments

  the races she won flying measured courses

  marked by towers with checkered windsocks

  and her endurance flights some of which

  were still the record for a woman.

  After dinner he talked vaguely of his life

  his regret that so much of it was business.

  He talked about the unrest in the country

  and the peculiar mood of the workers

  and he solicited the gangsters’ views over brandy

  on the likelihood of revolution.

  And now he said rising I’m going to
retire.

  But you’re still young said one of the gangsters.

  For the night the old man said with a smile

  I mean I’m going to bed. Good night.

  And when he went up the stairs of halved tree trunks

  they all looked at each other and had nothing to say.

  They were standing where the old man had left them

  in their tuxes and black ties.

  They had stood when he stood the women had stood when he stood

  and quietly as they could they all went to their rooms,

  where the bedcovers had been turned back and the reading lamps lighted.

  And in the room of the best gangster there

  a slim and swarthy man with dark eyes, a short man

  very well put together

  there were doors leading to a screened porch

  and he opened them and stood on the dark porch

  and heard the night life of the forest and the lake

  and the splash of the fish terrifyingly removed from Loon Lake.

  He had long since run out of words

  for his sickening recognition of real class

  nervously insisting how swell it was.

  He turned back into the room.

  His girl was fingering the hand-embroidered initials

  in the center of the blanket.

  They were the same initials as on the bath towels

  and on the cigarette box filled with fresh Luckies

  and on the matchbooks and on the breast pockets of the pajamas

  of every size stocked in the drawers

  the same initials, the logo.

  Annotate reference the best gangster there as follows: Thomas Crapo alias Tommy the Emperor. Born Hoboken New Jersey 1905. Hoboken Consolidated Grade School 1917. New Jersey National Guard 1914–1917. Rainbow Division American Expeditionary Force 1917–1918. Saw action Chateau-Thierry. Victory Medal. Founder Brandywine Importing Company 1919. Board of Directors Inverness Distribution Company. Founding partner Boardwalk Amusement Company 1920. President Dance-a-dime Incorporated. Founder Crapo Industrial Services Incorporated, New York, Chicago, Detroit. Patron Boys Town, March of Dimes, Police Athletic League New York, Policeman’s Benevolent Society Chicago. Present whereabouts unknown.

  ——

  Annotate reference his girl as follows: Clara Lukaćs born 1918 Hell’s Kitchen New York. School of the Sisters of Poor Clare, expelled 1932. S.S. Kresge counter girl (notions) 1932–1934. Receptionist Lukaćs’ West 29th St Funeral Parlor 1934. Present whereabouts unknown.

  The gangster’s girl was eighteen

  and had had an abortion he knew nothing about.

  She found something to criticize, one thing,

  the single beds, and as she undressed

  raising her knees, slipping off her shoes

  unhooking her stockings from her garters

  she spoke of the bloodlessness of the rich not believing it

  while the gangster lay between the sheets in the initialed pajamas

  arranging himself under the covers so that they were neat and tight

  as if trying to take as little possession of the bed as possible

  not wanting to appear to himself to threaten anything.

  He locked his hands behind his head and ignored the girl

  and lay in the dark not even smoking.

  But at three that morning there was a terrible howl

  from the pack of wild dogs that ran in the mountains—

  not wolves but dogs that had reverted

  when their owners couldn’t feed them any longer.

  The old man had warned them this might happen

  but the girl crept into the bed of the gangster

  and he put his arm around her and held her

  so that she would not slip off the edge

  and they listened to the howling

  and then the sound nearer to the house

  of running dogs, of terrifying exertion

  and then something gushing

  in the gardens below the windows.

  And they heard the soft separation

  together with grunts and snorts and yelps

  of flesh as it is fanged and lifted from a body.

  Jesus, the girl said

  and the gangster felt her breath on his collarbone

  and smelled the gel in her hair, the sweetness of it,

  and felt the gathered dice of her shoulders

  and her shivering and her cold hand on his stomach

  underneath the waistband.

  In the morning they joined the old man

  on the sun terrace outside the dining room.

  Halfway down the hill a handyman pushing a wheelbarrow

  was just disappearing around a bend in the path.

  I hope you weren’t frightened, the old man said, they took a deer

  and he turned surprisingly young blue eyes on the best gangster’s girl.

  Later that morning she saw on the hills in the sun

  all around Lake Loon

  patches of color where the trees were turning

  and she went for a walk alone and in the woods she saw

  in the orange and yellowing leaves of deciduous trees

  the coming winter

  imagining in these high mountains

  snow falling like some astronomical disaster

  and Loon Lake as the white hole of a monstrous meteor

  and every branch of the evergreens all around

  described with snow, each twig each needle

  balancing a tiny snowfall precisely imitative of itself.

  And at dinner she wore her white satin gown

  with nothing underneath to ruin the lines.

  And the old man’s wife came to dinner this night

  clearly younger than her husband, trim and neat

  with small beautifully groomed hands and still young shoulders and neck

  but brackets at the corners of her mouth.

  She talked to them politely with no condescension

  and showed them in glass cases in the game room

  trophies of air races she had won

  small silver women pilots

  silver cups and silver planes on pedestals.

  Then still early in the evening she said good night

  and that she had enjoyed meeting them.

  They watched her go.

  And after the old man retired

  and all the gangsters and their women stood around

  in their black ties and tuxes and long gowns

  the best gangster’s girl saw a large Victrola in the corner

  of the big living room with its leather couches and

  grand fireplace

  the servants spirited away the coffee service

  and the gangster’s girl put on a record and commanded

  everyone to dance.

  And they danced to the Victrola music

  they felt better they did the fox trot

  and went to the liquor cabinet and broke open some Scotch

  and gin and they danced and smoked

  the old man’s cigarettes from the boxes on the tables

  and the only light came from the big fire

  and the women danced with one arm dangling holding empty glasses

  and the gangsters nuzzled their shoulders

  and their new shoes made slow sibilant rhythms

  on the polished floors

  as they danced in their tuxes and gowns of satin at Loon Lake

  at Loon Lake

  in the rich man’s camp

  in the mountains of the Adirondacks.

  He was a whistling wonder with his face and arms and legs in bandages and bandages crisscrossed like bandoliers across his chest. Every now and then they looked in on him with the same separation of themselves from the sight as rubes looking at the freaks. They all wore green.

  They told him the dog packs were well known in the region, several of them told him that
, as if it were a consolation. He had difficulty speaking through his pain and swollen tissue, so that they could not be exactly sure what he thought of them and their fucking dogs.

  The elderly country doctor was eager to see what complication might set in to try him beyond the resources of his medicine.

  There were pills for the pain but I took as few as I could. It seemed important to me to stay awake, to know what was going on. Maybe I would come back. The room was damp. There was a small window high on the wall. I was in the basement of one of the log buildings I’d seen and it seemed to me not a very safe place to be. Also it was as bad as the original event to dream of it again drugged in a kind of dream prison and struggling for consciousness. Pain was better. It came in spasms and with the sharp point of imprinted teeth, it tore along in clawing sweeps down my chest and seemed sometimes to raise the bandages from the skin. I tried to consider it objectively, like a scientist sitting in a white coat looking through a microscope. Ahh, peering at each little cellpoint of pain. Remarkable!

  And since I was in pain, I thought of my mother and father. I thought of myself bedridden in Paterson. They look at me lying there flushed and wheezing, a boy impossibly exercised just by the act of living, and go off to work at their machines.

  A man looked in on me each morning and made a grunt of disgust or scorn just like my father had although heavyset not at all like my thin and gaunt father but in the same role, with the same wordless eloquence. He wore a kind of uniform of dark green shirt and matching pants.